2022-10-05 Meeting notes: Coordinate work on long needed features

Date

05 Oct 2022

Housekeeping

• Convener and notes: Martina Schildt

Discussion items

1. • "How we can be better to coordinate, and prioritize work on features, which the libraries have been asking for for a long time."
   • Select topics for next meetings
   • PC questions
   • AI Slack channel: open vs closed

Minutes

"How we can be better to coordinate, and prioritize work on features, which the libraries have been asking for for a long time."

• Proposal by Charlotte: "How we can be better to coordinate, and prioritize work on features, which the libraries have been asking for for a long time." But maybe this is a topic we can talk about, and bring back some ideas to the PC and the Release planning team? We have the ROAD jira key project, but I'm not sure these tickets are really used as a planning tool, when we do planning for the next (flower) release, and for the following (flower) releases.

• is a good PC discussion as well
• libraries need ti know what is development when
• on the other hand we need to stay agile
• prioritization process is needed - is in progress
• Laura: who is influencing the development; since we do not prioritize in JIRA anymore, it is hard to know what is being done
• Maura agrees in chat
• Owen: funding institutions have a say as well; it was never clear who had the final word in what is being done
• Martina S. agrees; new prioritization process is in approval status
• Maura: user management has no developers; 
• Charlotte in chat: The Prokopovych team are doing work on ui-users, and mod-users
• Dung-Lan in chat: There seems to competing priorities between implementing/to be implemented libraries and project funding organizations?!  Maybe I am totally off?!
• Kristin: not necessary competing; but funding institutions keep close their priorities
• Laura and Charlotte agree in chat
• Kristin: non-EBSCO customers' needs are of higher priority to EBSCO dev team
• Maura agrees in chat
• Owen: ERM dev work is funded by GBV; working closely together; but community feedback feeds in as well; without funding no work possible | it is the PO job to bring things together
• Owen: discussed at WOLFcon: how can we make it easier for libraries that do not fund but contribute people's time
• Maura agrees in chat
• Kristin: Leipzig is developing acquisitions functionality
• Martina S.: that is a good way | it is the orgnaitaion type | for that we need to have requirements or features in JIRA or at one place | maybe a roadmap per SIG could help
• Owen in chat: That's true Kristin - although there are costs to that approach as well (overheads to the owning development team and PO)
  It's about being really careful about how this is done - picking the right things
• Charlotte in chat: Also the Accession number generator. Which is part of Inventory, but the work is picked up by K-Int on the request of Martina Tumulla, HBZ and others?
• Charlotte: we need to have things aligned; multiple dev teams need to fint into each other and plan dev work
• Maura agrees
• Martina S.: we need some place where we talk about plans | where do we coordinate: AI, PC, JIRA?
• Laura's suggestion: in one or all councils
• Dung-Lan: library needs should be more important than funders interests
• Owen: we all have an interest in having a product that can be used by everyone; e.g. GBV wants to reach a product that is useful to everyone | but it will not happen that a product that does not work or is of no use for GBV will be paid for by them
• Laura: Yes! As an EBSCO customer, I think the community priorities are critical to the long term success of the platform.
• Brooks in chat: This is somewhat how platform work is done. It’s the functional development that is being driven by funding orgs because funding/resourcing for functional dev at the project level has been cut substantially.
• Kristin: POs want to know what the community wants | PC is trying to provide a platform
• Martina S.: can POs, Conveners, funders bring plans regularly (with each release or twice a year) to the councils and try to align, having community priorities in mind | for things that are not 
• Owen: good idea | not always easy to know in advance what will be done | most of the time planning for next release | 
• Brooks in chat: Most of the teams do that planning. It’s in Jira.
  There are dashboards for each release
  Orchid planning is being “finalized” now
• Charlotte in chat: I like your suggestion too, Martina. We have three releases a year, and having an update happening around this planning three times a year, would work well
• Kristin: like the idea | had sprint reviews |we can have something like a pre-relase meeting | we are lacking a way of communicating what is happening at a high level
• Owen agrees | sprint review sometimes provided that | sometimes there was a lot of talk that was not useful to people working in a different area
• Maura: when listening to the recordings people could pick what was important to them | were helpful | sprint reviews before they come out are helpful
• Charlotte in chat: I think also for the development team to get a shared understanding about what was happing in other dev teams - that they are missing now we do not have the Sprint reviews anymore
• Maura agrees
• Folio Forums have been a way of sharing - haven't happened for a while, but are not officially cancelled
• Owen: virtual version of sprint reviews - 5-10 min. information from teams
• Maura: Maybe both written and video, so you can see how the new feature works.
• Martina S.: good idea; people can pick what is of interest | having a meeting to discuss with homework to watch recording helped personally 
• Owen gives a dev update 5 to 10 minutes every meeting (happens every 2 weeks) | 
• Martina S.: work very well | people can ask questions and add requirements
• Kirstin in chat: Yes, folks at Acquisitions said they wanted something like that too
• Charlotte checked with Peter Murray: For the Forums, the people that have been putting on the Forums have gotten distracted elsewhere. The forum facilitators can put on a forum, but we don't have time to see them out and organize them.
• Owen: Folio Forums are helpful and a healthy thing to do
• Martina S.: Maybe we can find a new team to orgnize forums | maybe ask in a PC meeting?
• Owen in chat:  I wonder a regular schedule but delegated to a relevant SIG? So each SIG responsible for doing 1 a year doesn't sound too bad?
• Kristin: we need to coordinate with the SIGs

Future topics

• Topic proposal by Owen Stephens for October:
  • UX patterns for common cross-app tasks (e.g. would it be useful to have a UX for a 'quick add' task that could be used in different contexts when you need to create something in another app). I think it would be good to have UX specialists (Kimie, Gill) present for this, and possibly also some Stripes devs (e.g. John C/Zak)
  • Use of shortcut keys and macros for more effective cross-app working  - it also be good to have UX and Stripes/dev knowledge for this discussion I think. I know @Laura (she/they) uses macros so might have insights into the potential for cross-app working
  • Potential for external 'workflow' solutions for cross-app interactions
    • I think 'workflow' is a dangerous term here - in this context it's more about automation than user workflows, although I think there is overlap
    • I was particularly struck by the solution in production at TAMU (Jeremy Huff and Sebastian Hammer presented, the recording is at https://prod-zoom-recordings-openlibraryfoundation-org.s3.amazonaws.com/50dc6c87-3912-43fa-8287-56ec73b12bbb%2Fshared_screen_with_speaker_view%28CC%29.mp4 starting at 3 hrs, 14 min) - I think getting someone from TAMU to talk about how this is used would be v interesting
    • There was also a presentation on the use of a tool called Airflow at Stanford for "bibliographic workflow" but I've not watched that yet so not 100% sure if it is completely applicable - I think the core use case there was systems migration but it may go beyond that
• Data sync update and recommendations on next steps
• UX/UI and implementers topics
  • should be Wednesdays

PC questions for SIGs

1. 1. Can you share the purpose of your SIG: functional area/cross cutting/affinity group, etc?

      1. About us

         The App Interaction SIG reviews workflows and data flows between FOLIO apps to clarify relationships and agree on future development steps. Its role is to determine gaps in cross app functionality and develop mechanisms and solutions to support required functions. For this outcome to be achieved it defines app interactions for all types of resources as well as all kinds of use cases for the various needs of institutions. As part of defining workflows between FOLIO apps, different scenarios for varying external partners and sources are taken into consideration.

   2. What areas does your SIG have responsibility for?
   3. What do you feel like your SIGs purpose is currently? Has it changed over time?
   4. Do you have product owners who regularly work with the SIG? Do you feel that your requirements are being successfully developed into FOLIO?
   5. How do you feel about the resources allocated in the development areas that are focused on?
   6. What are some of the challenges facing your SIG/subgroup? Are there ways in which you feel the SIG has been unable to accomplish it's mission?
   7. If you work on areas of development, do you feel like there are areas of development not resourced at all or significantly under-resourced?
   8. What has been successful with the SIG? What things contributed to that success?
   9. What could the Product Council do to help the SIG?
   10. Do you feel like the Roadmap accurately represents the work of your SIG (both desired and already accounted for)?
   11. How can we improve our communications with the SIG? Does the current monthly reporting work? Would have a dedicated PC meeting for your SIG be helpful?
   12. Is the SIG comfortable communicating with the PC and have a sense of when a PC conversation would be helpful?
   13. What functions should the PC be accomplishing and how would the SIGs like to have those need met?

AI Slack channel: open vs closed

• Discuss and decide

Next steps

Chat

18:00:35 Von  Martina Schildt  an  Alle:
    Agenda: https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/display/AppInt/2022-10-05+Meeting+notes%3A+PC+and+SIG+communication+%7C+Future+topics
18:08:40 Von  Martina Schildt  an  Alle:
    Topic for today: How we can be better to coordinate, and prioritize work on features, which the libraries have been asking for for a long time.
18:08:51 Von  Martina Schildt  an  Alle:
    Topic for Monday: PC Questions and future topics
18:12:04 Von  Dung-Lan Chen  an  Alle:
    How things are prioritized came up on top in ACQ SIG discussion of PC questions for SIG yesterday as well as Martina is saying.
18:13:58 Von  Charlotte Whitt  an  Alle:
    Great point Laura
18:13:59 Von  Maura Byrne  an  Alle:
    +1 Laura
18:14:46 Von  Dung-Lan Chen  an  Alle:
    There seems to competing priorities between implementing/to be implemented libraries and project funding organizations?!  Maybe I am totally off?!
18:16:51 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    Bluntly that means that no one is paying for developers to work on it
18:17:25 Von  Charlotte Whitt  an  Alle:
    The Prokopovych team are doing work on ui-users, and mod-users
18:17:39 Von  Charlotte Whitt  an  Alle:
    But mostly bug fixes
18:18:32 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    Apologies - I meant that comment slightly more generally - when no one pays for development to happen, it doesn't happen
18:18:46 Von  Laura Daniels  an  Alle:
    +1 Kristin
18:18:49 Von  Charlotte Whitt  an  Alle:
    Yes, true Kristin M.
18:20:39 Von  Maura Byrne  an  Alle:
    +1 Kristin
18:23:12 Von  Maura Byrne  an  Alle:
    +1 Owen
18:24:22 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    That's true Kristin - although there are costs to that approach as well (overheads to the owning development team and PO)
18:25:05 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    It's about being really careful about how this is done - picking the right things
18:26:00 Von  Charlotte Whitt  an  Alle:
    Also the Accession number generator. Which is part of Inventory, but the work is picked up by K-Int on the request of Martina Tumulla, HBZ and others?
18:26:33 Von  Kimie Matsudo Kester  an  Martina Schildt(Direktnachricht):
    Jumping off now. Will come another time. Thanks!
18:28:31 Von  Maura Byrne  an  Alle:
    +1 Charlotte
18:33:48 Von  Laura Daniels  an  Alle:
    Yes! As an EBSCO customer, I think the community priorities are critical to the long term success of the platform.
18:35:20 Von  Brooks Travis  an  Alle:
    This is somewhat how platform work is done. It’s the functional development that is being driven by funding orgs because funding/resourcing for functional dev at the project level has been cut substantially.
18:37:51 Von  Brooks Travis  an  Alle:
    Most of the teams do that planning. It’s in Jira.
18:38:05 Von  Brooks Travis  an  Alle:
    There are dashboards for each release
18:38:34 Von  Brooks Travis  an  Alle:
    Orchid planning is being “finalized” now
18:39:14 Von  Charlotte Whitt  an  Alle:
    I like your suggestion too, Martina. We have three releases a year, and having an update happening around this planning three times a year, would work well
18:43:00 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    Yep - that's the challenge!
18:43:16 Von  Martina Schildt  an  Alle:
    and then Charlotte sorry
18:43:31 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    At 2 times speed 🙂
18:43:39 Von  Kristin Martin (UChicago she/her)  an  Alle:
    definitely
18:43:56 Von  Martina Schildt  an  Alle:
    1.5 because 2 times was to fast for me ;)
18:44:17 Von  Charlotte Whitt  an  Alle:
    I think also for the development team to get a shared understanding about what was happing in other dev teams - that they are missing now we do not have the Sprint reviews anymore
18:45:50 Von  Dung-Lan Chen  an  Alle:
    Yes, I remember finding something in YouTube in my early days trying to learn more about FOLIO after our Director signed the contract.  But I didn't see more recent stuff in YouTube and wondered why at the time :)
18:46:43 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    Are the Folio Community Forums still happening?
18:46:46 Von  Maura Byrne  an  Alle:
    +1 Charlotte
18:47:22 Von  Dung-Lan Chen  an  Alle:
    Folio Community Forums?!
18:47:50 Von  Maura Byrne  an  Alle:
    Even if there was a wiki page for new features/updates for each sprint, with a link to the video presentation, I think that would work.
18:47:51 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    Those might have been some of the YouTube videos you saw
18:49:28 Von  Maura Byrne  an  Alle:
    Maybe both written and video, so you can see how the new feature works.
18:49:39 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    It's more work for the dev teams though!
18:51:07 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    I think it's a great example of where async could totally work
18:51:33 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    I think the aim/purpose and what was expected would need to be really clear to the teams
18:51:53 Von  Charlotte Whitt  an  Alle:
    Re. the status for the FOLIO Community Forum, then Peter explains following:
18:51:55 Von  Charlotte Whitt  an  Alle:
    Peter Murray
      6:50 PM
    For the Forums, the people that have been putting on the Forums have gotten distracted elsewhere. The forum facilitators can put on a forum, but we don't have time to see them out and organize them.
18:53:43 Von  Kristin Martin (UChicago she/her)  an  Alle:
    Yes, folks at Acquisitions said they wanted something like that too
18:54:35 Von  Kristin Martin (UChicago she/her)  an  Alle:
    Martina, you are disappearing.
18:54:56 Von  Martina Schildt  an  Alle:
    I know , it is getting dark here :)
18:55:48 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    🙂
18:56:28 Von  Charlotte Whitt  an  Alle:
    It’s kind of a very poetic way, to show the meeting is soon ending
18:56:37 Von  Martina Schildt  an  Alle:
    ;)
18:57:39 Von  Dung-Lan Chen  an  Alle:
    Maybe the forum would just be a few times each year instead of on a regular schedule?
18:58:08 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    I wonder a regular schedule but delegated to a relevant SIG?
18:58:29 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    So each SIG responsible for doing 1 a year doesn't sound too bad?
18:58:31 Von  Martina Schildt  an  Alle:
    like the idea
18:58:52 Von  Dung-Lan Chen  an  Alle:
    Yes, to Owen and Martina!
18:59:32 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    No I'm done!
18:59:33 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    🙂
18:59:37 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    Have a good evening
18:59:39 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    /day
18:59:44 Von  Owen Stephens  an  Alle:
    Thanks all

Attendees

Action items